Wedding March from “The Golden Cockerel”

Even before the first performance of his opera The Golden Cockerel - which, sadly, took place several months after his death - Rimsky-Korsakov seems to have known that the Wedding March would be a winner. Certainly, he had it played at an orchestral concert in Moscow where, with its blatant allusion to a popular Russian song called “The moon shines brightly,” it can scarcely have failed to delight the audience. In the opera it accompanies the triumphant entry of the sleepy old King Dodon with his new bride the Queen of Shemakha. Little does he know what a fatal attraction she is going to be - although, if he had had his wits about him, the brilliantly ironic and far from dignified character of the music might have given him a clue.

P.C.